MIA-Only Causalties Are YOU

Nobody home at City Hall

Many councillors are MII ... Missing In Inaction

By SUE-ANN LEVY

Last week I endeavoured to reach NDP Coun. Pam McConnell by calling her City Hall office -- which has been pitch black for the duration of the strike by 30,000 CUPE workers, now in its 28th day.
The voice-mail message on her phone line goes like this: "During the labour disruption non-union and management city staff have been redeployed to different work assignments and our office's capacity to respond to constituent concerns is limited. If your problem is of an urgent nature, please contact Access Toronto at 416-338-0338 for immediate assistance. Voice-mail will be retrieved periodically."
I left my name and phone number -- twice -- but have yet to hear back from McConnell.
It left me wondering if the councillor should be donating her staff budget for the past 28 days to Access Toronto, since they seem to be doing her dirty work for her.
I encountered similar messages when I called the dark offices of Janet Davis and Kyle Rae, who've been pretty much MII (missing in inaction) at Socialist Silly Hall for the entire strike, too.
The City Hall offices of union sympathizers Paula Fletcher, Adam Vaughan, Shelley Carroll, Giorgio Mammoliti, Adam Giambrone, Anthony Perruzza, Gord Perks, Glenn De Baeremaeker and Joe Mihevc have also been consistently non-functioning -- the result of a decision by the gang of lefties not to cross the picket lines.
Other offices have been open but the councillors in charge are AWOL too: Howard Moscoe, Sandra Bussin and Maria Augimeri.
Coun. Mike Del Grande's City Hall office has been closed as well.
Now there's no doubt in my mind that His Grayness -- Mayor David Miller -- should take the lion's share of the blame for the lengthy strike.
But I would be remiss if I ignored those councillors (and their staff members) who seem to have forgotten who pays their $99,153.60 salaries and $53,100 office budgets. Evidently they've decided they're on strike as well.
Never mind their cowardice with respect to crossing the picket lines. But these are all the same councillors who have adamantly refused to roll back the 2.4% salary hikes they took this year, several of them claiming they work 14-hour days. Most of the no-shows had no issue either using scarce city cash to take trips in recent months to exotic locales like Vienna, Whistler and Dubai.
CALLS NOT RETURNED
So I decided I'd contact those MII to find out what they've been up to for the past 28 days.
In addition to McConnell's non call-back, Fletcher, De Baeremaeker, Mihevc, Bussin and Augmeri did not return Sun phone calls.
One of Rae's assistants confirmed the councillor is out of the country on holiday.
Mammoliti said he's been spending most of his time moving his constituency office -- "in the middle of the night" -- from a community centre (where the strikers picket) to a new location on Wilson Ave.
Del Grande said it has nothing to do with crossing the picket lines. He says it's been far "more productive" to work out in his Scarborough ward.
Perks said he and his staff are "all working" from home and sometimes meeting at offices across the city.
Carroll said she's deliberately staying away from City Hall -- working mostly from home -- because that sends a message she respects the picket line, which keeps CUPE at the bargaining table.
She said the "silver lining" in all of this is she's been going to see her constituents "personally."
Vaughan wrote me a lengthy e-mail saying he has set up a satellite office for his staff in the ward -- free of pickets -- and has meetings "roughly every hour on the hour" with follow-up calls in between. "My schedule is as busy as ever," he wrote.
Ditto for Janet Davis who also e-mailed me to say she's been working "full-time everyday" along with her staff since the strike began.
"But my primary objective is to see the strike settled as soon as possible," she writes, not elaborating how she intends to do that.
All of that said, councillors Case Ootes and Peter Milczyn, whose City Hall offices have been open each weekday since the strike began, are not impressed with their NDP colleagues.
"Closing their offices is inexcusable," bristled Ootes.
"I think elected officials should not run and hide from the seat of their government during a crisis whether it's a strike, or a snowstorm, or war or an insurrection," Milczyn added. "Unless your life is in danger, this is where you should be."